


so go ahead and love me while it's still a crime

by ethelmuggs



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Character Analysis, Character Study, Internalized Homophobia, bigger tws for violent intrusive thoughts and much discussion of masturbation and sex, or lack thereof, tw for very fleeting like one sentence mentions of eating disorders and sexual assault, well only if you put your sexy subtext goggles on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:53:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25111204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ethelmuggs/pseuds/ethelmuggs
Summary: my interpretation of eighteen year old roman's fucky little brain <3 that's it <3
Comments: 18
Kudos: 57





	so go ahead and love me while it's still a crime

Roman Roy is eighteen, and he can’t ride a bike without stabilisers, tie his own shoelaces, or jerk off. Here’s to an eventful year. 

Masturbation wise, it’s never been complicated, exactly. You just work it out, awkwardly cross legged at the edge of a four poster bed wishing you were a little taller: there is something wrong with you and it aches. But not like that, not in a complex, beautiful way, not in so many harsh words. You are under no circumstances a poet - if you were, you probably wouldn’t have your hand on your tragically unresponsive dick. Well, not unresponsive; it’s just that the recognisable twitch is defined not by gratification, but by a leaping, constant sort of desire that is simply left, unsatisfied and volcanically dormant. Different associations. Some people run the race as best they can, but don’t get a medal; unfortunately, the Roys have never liked the idea of participation prizes. Are you a child, Roman, what the fuck _are_ you?

That’s not his father’s voice; just someone’s, just the narrator’s. Just anyone who ever fucking sees him, actually. 

He could call it pain - the ache - but that would be reductive. Pain is quick and then it goes away, because if it didn’t, everyone would’ve killed themselves by now; I could take that knife and stab my brother, my sister, my father, I could jump into the sea and drown, I could smash that baby’s head in, I could tape that plastic bag over my head, fuck, he has numbness on the brain like a nervous tick. The prospect of it makes him gasp sometimes, and he stifles it and thinks about what being castrated would feel like. He imagines it’s not dissimilar to sex.

The primary problem is that there’s no lack of things that make him horny, there’s just nothing to be done about it. At its core, it’s frustration; nothing fucking works, and it’s not fucking _fair_. I want things. I want the things I want. I don’t want the things I don’t want. Our father who art in Waystar, hallowed be thy net worth, it’s not that fucking special so could I just have it?

What does it mean when your dick is hard until you see your own hand and remember that it is yours and you shouldn’t be biting your fingernails and you have control over what you are doing and this is a conscious act? When you see your scarred cuticles and fingers that aren’t long enough and think, I could kill someone with these hands, and all the more because they are mine, and it would be entirely my fault and no one else’s. It means it’s time to stop thinking and get it over with, you fucking freak.

Pain is quick and it goes away when you tell it to go away; it fucking better. He’s very used to compacting stories into small talk, only to be discussed in situations in which he will not be believed: “Yeah, Kendall, I actually got non-consensually groped the fuck out of at school, so that, like, totally cancels out my ‘male privilege’, asshole.” - just to watch his brother squirm and enjoy feeling absolutely nothing. Kendall always feels too much, it’s not hard to do better. He’s the fucking child, not Roman.

Since he was thirteen, Roman has had this recurring dream about being in a coma, with everyone he’s ever met crying at his bedside. In the dream, and this is the thing he wants, he tunes their weeping out - ignores it and breathes in time to the heart monitor - trying not to smile so they won’t know he’s awake, then when he wakes up, he’s hard and his sheets are wet. At the time, having that power seemed like the sexiest thing possible. Like, who’s stupid, now? Who doesn’t know shit now? I want to lie on my back and wait, and I want no one to ever say my name unless they love me, and I want my eye sockets to grow teeth so I can chew on the world for hours like it’s gum and swallow it down and not give a shit about the screams. I heard chewing gum can be good for your jawline. I want to be very, very beautiful, like a statue. I want to have the gag reflex for a proper eating disorder. You know, like a real man. That’s Roman Roy, teenage psychopath, growing his hair out and then cutting it and growing it again.

Shiv reads The Wasp Factory for school and won’t stop calling him “rich boy Frank Cauldhame”. He wants her flame to burn out and for her to deal with her fucking mommy issues. She complains too much. _She’s_ the fucking child.

There really is no point in feeling things. I want no one to ever say my name unless they love me. So, I want no one to ever say my name. Self-pitying, melodramatic bullshit; he’s good at that, and even better at dwelling on it.

There really is no point in feeling things. Resentment is pretty good, though, as it goes, and Schadenfreude can get very addictive, especially when it’s all-encompassing. Like, self-directed; like, I’m the werewolf and the moon simultaneously, peppered with craters and sprouting claws, whining helplessly. When he has to be silent, he wants to scream, and when he has to talk, he’d rather die than say a word to anyone. And this isn’t beautiful or interesting, it can’t be. It just means he gets a lot of haircuts he doesn’t want to get, and he doesn’t really have any friends. What he means is: I hate everyone and that doesn’t exclude myself, and that doesn’t mean I don’t deserve more and actually I’m the only person who does.

And it felt really good, when he fell off his bike and dislocated his wrist. He remembers two things cutting through the physical pain: the bitter irony of how he doesn’t seem to be able to use it for anything anyway, and the bark of harsh, instinctive laughter from his dad, that wasn’t even cruel. It felt _so_ fucking good.

Logan always says exactly what he thinks. He’s like a middle school bully in that way, except with four kids, seven houses and a global media conglomerate. To be fair, most of Roman’s middle school bullies were about one dead dad and blackmailed trophy widow from having the same. There is one type of person to be. One day, he’ll climb out of his cocoon of adolescence and be it too; a beautiful fucking business butterfly.

I can’t look at things without narrowing my eyes anymore. What does that mean?

Probably that you need glasses, idiot.

This is you right now. This is you today, so unloved it hurts. At the optician's, they sew your eyelids shut, then stick them back open with matchsticks. It’s down to luck whether they catch or not. When I die, no one will think to close my eyes. That’s a good thing; it’s a good thing I’m never going to die. He learns to smile very wide, egged on by his mother's voice: "Show your teeth, Ro-Ro! Say ‘Parental neglect!’”

I'm so inside my head, god, you're so inside your head you need a fucking chisel; doctor, how does one lobotomise oneself? And do men, like, get lobotomies? I could stop thinking so much. I want to stop thinking so much. I will stop thinking so much. That has to be an inevitability. I will be better; I will exorcise whatever demon is living inside of me and everyone will understand that I was trying all along. I can tame the snake that curls its way around my skeleton and bulges in my stomach and make it sit by my side for the world to see. It’s not like I can let it go, though. There is something wrong with you, Roman, and it will always ache. It’s starting to squeeze your eyes out of your head.

This is one of those times he needs to be silent and wants to scream.

I want someone to tell me what I’m doing wrong so I can keep doing it. Forever, because I am never going to die. He thinks about being burnt at the stake; he thinks he’d feel it the whole time, and even as ash being tipped into a vase, he would vibrate and shudder and be painfully aware of every tiny piece of himself, and how it works and doesn’t work. There’s something else sex might be like: two burnt bodies being stirred together in a metal urn. Or maybe being crucified. 

What are you going to be?

I don’t know, crucified? Maybe suspended in boiling water like a lobster. I’m going to be alive, and I’m going to be happy when people suffer, because I’m smart enough for that.

At the very least, I’ll be able to tie my fucking shoelaces, and after I can do that, I’ll finally be able to laugh at the people who can’t, which is what it all comes down to, anyway. You develop the capacity to be white-hot, purely mean and selfish, and that soothes the ache; it has to, because the feeling is made of one thing. Seriously, that’s it. He wants to be one thing, melted back together. It doesn’t seem very likely.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! comments and kudos are much appreciated n please come n talk to me on tumblr @fingersmithbysarahwaters :)
> 
> title is from gmf by john grant ultimate roman song ALSO while ur here have a funky reminder that it's a good thing that everyone's interpretations of the roy siblings are personal and different and the nuances of their individual experiences have most likely been left vague on purpose in order to prompt discussion. i swear it's fun.


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